Tanith Lee Quotes

How had I not seen that there was nothing more important than an execution, and that when you come right down to it, it was the only thing a man could truly be interested in?

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

If a man dies when you hang him, keep hanging him until he gets used to it.

You will be excellently executed.

Capital punishment, that thing scares me, it really does. I was talking to my friend about the electric chair, and he starts freakin' out. He's like 'the electric chair? That's too good for these people. That's too good for them'. Alright, how do we make the electric chair worse? How about this? They have to pedal a car battery to their own head. Is that ok? Is that enough, Mr. Hitler?

You have no idea what an appetite it gives one, being executed.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.

Execution halts your breath, helter skelter spiral death.

Make your way to death row and speak with the tragic victims of criminality. As they prepare to make their pathetic walk to the electric chair, their hopeless cry is that society will not forgive. Capital punishment is society's final assertion that it will not forgive.

All that's missing for Utah is a blindfold and a cigarette.

A hanging in a good quarrel is an easy death they say, though I could never hear of any that came back to say so.

in Germany in 1851, the death of one Bertha Zillman in 1893 was witnessed by a number of journalists. She was sentenced for poisoning her husband, although the court heard evidence that he beat both her and their children. The execution was scheduled to take place on 31 October at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin at eight o’clock in the morning. Her hair was put up in a bun and her dress cut down to her shoulders, though she was given a shawl to cover herself. When the warden went to fetch her, she was prostrate with fear and had to be helped to the block by two male warders. She silently dropped the shawl and, with one swing, was beheaded by her executioner.

Most people are not affected by [the death penalty]. It's like how many people are actually sent to Iraq and Afghanistan? Such a small percentage.

Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of assassination.

We are concerned here only with the imposition of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and when a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction suitable to the most extreme of crimes.

That's why I'm a big supporter of the death penalty. I want to be the hangman. I would put many more people to death like the kids who want to kill other people, I'd put 'em to death.

As the warden of San Quentin, I presided over four executions. After each one, someone on the staff would ask, 'Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?' We knew the answer: No.

This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?

It's like being on Death Row in an American jail. You are waiting for the door handle to turn, not knowing whether it's a reprieve or just your final breakfast before being executed.

What you do to these men on California's Death Row, you do to God.

When I was a child and came with my elders to Galway for their salmon fishing in the river that rushes past the gaol, I used to look with awe at the window where men were hung, and the dark, closed gate.

We will hang you, never fear, Most politely, most politely.

'Tis ill talking of halters in the house of a man that was hanged.

Brown’s execution will make the gallows as glorious as the cross.

The guillotine governs.